in every borough you will find a place colorless
tonight on Roosevelt there are
old Chinese men dragging on Marlboro’s
when i walk by and they tell me to zip up my jacket
i wonder where their children are
and if they can still tell them to button their coats
inside, the Italian men are bent over counters
hunched together with furious faces, stubs in hand
there is no warmth awaiting them back home
they yell at the screens and at each other
night after night they stumble
into the dim lights and tables without chairs
in search of the elusive moment when all
will be right again but it never comes.
they have no identifying features of their own
so they share
gray winter coats, the smell of ash and
children that are ashamed of them.
is this poem about fathers of different ethnicities who happen to be shitty paternal figures?
ReplyDeleteerr not quite- if you live in nyc you may have seen these all over the city: http://www.nycotb.com/newnycotb/Default.aspx
ReplyDeleteoff-track betting became legal in nyc in the 1970's.
the ethnicities were mentioned because that's just what the men inside happened to be. however, i do think that it gives insight into both the neighborhood & also nyc history/immigration. depending on your perspective these men can be seen as "failed immigrants," not in possession of the dream but in severe debt from gambling.
the italians can be of significance because a major reason the city agreed to legalize the betting is to bring down organized crime rings that were handling the bets. nyc's italian americans in the outer boroughs (bronx, brooklyn) still carry some of the stigma from this.
you can go one step further and look at the italian man as a representation of someone that was in charge of the whole system (albeit illegally) to someone that is now merely a victim of it.
thanks for bringing it into perspective! :)
ReplyDelete